March 28 Monday – In Rome, Sam cabled Henry C. Robinson, his old Hartford attorney and billiards friend.

Accept the offer provided one half of Paige & Hammersley’s interests in the company be added to it. Otherwise decline [MTP; also in NB 31 TS 34].

Note: Sam often spelled Hamersley’s name with two “m”s. The “offer” is clarified by Sam’s May 22, 1892 to Whitmore, which names “Mallory’s proposition,” an offer which was off and evidently on again, for Marshall Mallory to buy out Sam’s rights in the Paige typesetter for $250,000. See entries, April, end 1891; June 15 & 17, 1891; July 18, 1891.

Henry C. Robinson cabled Sam. A handwritten TS advised to “accept Mallory’s proposition for royalties & leave half interest … for settlement with Paige.” Sam wrote on the sheet, 4 o’clock p.m, Monday Mar 28th 92” [MTP; also NB 31 TS 34].

Two copies of Merry Tales were deposited with the Copyright Office on this day. The first edition was published early in April, 1892 [Hirst, “A Note on the Text” Afterword materials p.15, Oxford ed. 1996]. The N.Y. Times announced it on Apr. 4, 1892 (see entry); see also Jan. 25, 1892 entry.

In the 1996 Oxford edition, from the “Afterword” by Forrest G. Robinson:

“The publication of Merry Tales may be viewed as a minor episode in the much larger drama of Mark Twain’s financial collapse. By 1892, as Paige’s temperamental machine drew him ever deeper into debt, Twain looked to his publishing company, which was also failing, for a timely boost. On the initiative of his partner, Fred Hall, who took charge of the business when Twain fled to Europe in 1891, Webster and Company issued the Fiction, Fact, and Fancy series of trade books (seventy-five cents in cloth bindings, twenty-five cents in paper) designed to sell quickly and in large quantities to a popular audience hungry for inexpensive entertainment….But even at bargain rates the collection sold poorly, and thus contributed in a small way to the eventual undoing of its author” [2].

Note: Messent and others point out that Hall chose the name Merry Tales, one which Sam asked Harper’s to change when the book was reprinted in 1897, calling the collection “the mess” [Short Works, 117]. See Dec. 5, 1896 to Harper for Sam’s request.